Death of a Newspaperman: A Novel

Their lives were centuries apart. Their spirit was one and the same.

Desmond De Leon grows up in the outskirts of 1980s San Francisco, avoiding gangs, dodging bullets and caring nothing about the petty politics of his troubled part of town. He’s far too fascinated with the bloodier and bolder history of San Francisco newspaper journalism based downtown. Once the epicenter of American journalism, it’s where the infamous newspaper tycoon Charles Sansome died with pistol in hand during an era when editorial disputes were resolved within 20 paces.

As the headstrong, scrappy kid rises from San Francisco Call copy boy to reporter, he documents the deteriorating character and morals of his journalist mentors, along with the decline of the newspaper itself. Walking the same ghostly streets as his 19th-century newspaper tycoon heroes once did, and with a dash of supernatural guidance, Desi’s search to find out what Call founder Charles Sansome would do leads him from the highest avenues of society and politics to the back alleys of the Mission District in this hip, funny, romantic and ultimately tragic near roman à clef written by the one who lived it.